Government requests to remove content FAQs

What is a content removal request?

Governments make content removal requests to remove information from Google products, such as blog posts or YouTube videos. The data includes court orders sent to us to remove content, regardless of whether the court order is directed at Google. For the purposes of this report, we also count government requests that we review to determine if particular content should be removed for violating a product's community guidelines or content policies.

Is this data comprehensive?

There are limits to what this data can tell us. There may be multiple requests that ask for the removal of the same piece of content. In addition, in the first two reporting periods we haven't released specific numbers for countries that issued fewer than 10 requests, and that requested the removal of fewer than 10 items, due to technical constraints specific to those reporting periods. Similarly, if a government agency used a web form where we can't identify the party reporting the request to remove content, we generally have no way of including those reports in our statistics.

Do your statistics cover all categories of content removals?

No. Our policies and systems are set up to identify and remove child sexual abuse imagery whenever we become aware of it, regardless of whether that request comes from the government. As a result, it's difficult to accurately track which of those removals were requested by governments, and we haven't included those statistics here. We counted requests for removal of all other types of content (e.g., alleged defamation, hate speech, impersonation).

How many of these requests resulted in the removal of content?

The "removal request" numbers represent the number of requests we have received per country; the percentage of requests in response to which we removed content; and the number of individual items of content requested to be removed.

How is removal different from blocking services?

Some governments and government agencies choose to block specific services as a means of controlling access to content in their jurisdiction. The content removal numbers we've reported do not include any data on government-mandated service blockages. Our Traffic graphs show you when Google services have been inaccessible.

Do you ever remove content that violates local law without a court order or government request?

Yes. The statistics we report here do not include content removals that we regularly process every day in response to non-governmental user complaints across our products for violation of our content policies or community guidelines (for example, we do not permit hate speech in Blogger and other similar products). In many cases these requests result in the removal of material that violates local law, independent of any government request or court order seeking such removal.

Why haven't you complied with all of the content removal requests?

There are many reasons we may not have removed content in response to a request. Some requests may not be specific enough for us to know what the government wanted us to remove (for example, no URL is listed in the request), and others involve allegations of defamation through informal letters from government agencies, rather than court orders. We generally rely on courts to decide if a statement is defamatory according to local law.

From time to time, we receive falsified court orders. We do examine the legitimacy of the documents that we receive, and if we determine that a court order is false, we will not comply with it. Here are some examples of fake court orders that we have received:

We received a fake Canadian court order that demanded the removal of search results that link to three pages of the site forums.somethingawful.com. The fake order claimed that the site contained defamatory statements, but did not cite the law that was supposedly broken.

We received a fake American court order that demanded the removal of a blog because it supposedly violated the copyrights of an individual by using her name in various blog posts.

We received four fake Indian court orders [1, 2, 3, 4] that demanded the removal of blog posts and entire blogs for alleged defamation. The orders threatened to punish Google for failure to comply.

We received four fake Peruvian court orders [1, 2, 3, 4] that demanded the removal of blog posts and entire blogs for alleged defamation. Two of the orders claimed to be issued from New York.

We received five fake German court orders [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] that demanded removal of search results that were allegedly defamatory. These orders were created by private individuals pretending they were from different courts in Germany.

Where can I learn more about government requests for content removal?

There are several independent organizations that release regular reports about government requests for information and content removal, including Lumen and the Open Net Initiative

Are the observations that you make about the data comprehensive and do they all relate to the same topics?

These observations are meant to highlight certain requests that we have received during each reporting period, along with some trends that we've noticed in the data, and are by no means exhaustive.

Why do there appear to be significantly more requests being made for reasons categorized as "Other" during the July–December 2010 reporting period?

Prior to the January–June 2011 reporting period we were not tracking the reasons for removal requests at a very granular level. As a result of this, many requests were classified as "Other" instead of something more specific.

Why is the compliance rate for government agency and law enforcement requests so much higher than those for court orders in many countries?

Google carefully evaluates each and every request we receive, including those that include court orders. Individuals who request the removal of content often submit court orders with their requests in order to provide supporting evidence for their claim. In many cases, these court orders do not compel Google to take any action. Rather, they are the result of a dispute with a third party where a court has determined that specific content has been deemed illegal. We also often receive claims with court orders that are forgeries or are not sufficiently specific.

Why do numbers of items requested to be removed from AdWords appear high until the beginning of 2012?

When we receive removal requests for AdWords, the requests typically only cite the URLs that allegedly violate the law or our policies. One URL can pertain to hundreds or thousands of ads. If we decide to remove ads in response to a request, we will look into the total number of ads that the request may affect.

Until the beginning of 2012, we counted the total number of ads removed (rather than the number of URLs or ads cited in the removal request). When we did not perform any removals in response to the request, we counted the number of URLs requested to be removed, so the number of items was lower.

When you remove content as the result of a legal request, do you limit the scope of removal to a particular geography or do you remove globally?

Legal standards vary greatly by country. Content that violates a specific law in one country may be legal in others. Where possible, we remove or restrict access to the content in the country where it is deemed to be illegal. When content is found to violate our Community Guidelines, however, we remove or restrict access globally.

What is Google's position on the Santa Clara Principles?

Google supports the spirit of the Santa Clara Principles as an effort to help shape how companies across our industry can think about transparency for action taken on content.